Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 811: The Righteous Healing Journey with Justin B. Long

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Episode 811: The Righteous Healing Journey with Justin B. Long · The Trauma Therapist

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Trauma Therapist Podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early and ad free right
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now. Become a Plus listener by going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma
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Therapist Podcast and signing up today or welcome back to the Trauma Thepist podcast.
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My name is Gamiferson. My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible
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selves, to be human, to be real, not just a clinician.
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I'm a big believer in who we are is more important than what we know,
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and this requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires
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intention. Can learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma
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Therapist Project dot com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get
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started, all right. So five four, three, two and one,
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our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
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guest today, Justin be Long Justin welcome, Thanks guy, It's great to
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be here. Awesome. So Justin is an author, business owner of a
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successful veterinary practice, and the host of the hit podcast Straight from the Horse
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Doctor's Mouth, which he produces with his wife, Doctor Erica Laker is that
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pronounced right Latcher Latcher. Justin's mission is. Justin's mission is to make the
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world a better place for people by helping men learn to understand themselves and grow
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into their full potential. His current book, The Righteous Rage of a Ten
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year Old Boy, is a raw, intense examination of his childhood, the
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traumatic events that formed his negative self image, and his journey through therapy to
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overcome it all. Justin, thanks for being here. I'm so excited to
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have this conversation. Appreciate it. So before we get going, share with
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our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. I'm currently in
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Florida. I live right outside of Gainesville, Florida. I moved here to
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be with my wife in twenty fourteen, but prior to that, I lived
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all my adult life in Georgia, where I ran away to be in the
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Army as soon as I could get away from home when I got out of
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high school. But I grew up in Oklahoma and went to high school in
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Wyoming, so I started out in the Midwest and have stayed as far away
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from there as possible ever since. So let's dive in here. How did
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this start for you? What was going on? Everything that I understand about
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my life is stuff that I know in retrospect, right, I've learned all
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of this along the way looking back. But I grew up in a very
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emotionally dysfunctional household with a mom and dad who both came out of emotionally dysfunctional
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households, and they had no parenting skills, they had no adulting skills.
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They just didn't really understand how to do life, I think. But I
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didn't understand any of that at that time. All I knew was that my
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dad was all he's angry, and the only emotion he ever knew how to
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express was rage, and that he believed in work. If we weren't sleeping,
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we should be working. That was his philosophy, and that's what he
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impressed on me as far back as I can remember. And so, you
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know, I would come home from school, I'd have this long list of
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chores that would have to do every day, Like in the winter time,
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I would have to chop firewood and stack that in this rack that he had
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behind the house. And so I would come home from school every day and
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make this. The stack of firewood had to be perfect within within the racket
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couldn't be any piece of sticking out the front or the back, or you
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know, I had to be flat across the top all this stuff right,
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and move on to my next chore and do all the stuff that it was
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on my list for the day. And my dad would come home from work
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and we would go inspect all of the things that I was supposed to do,
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and we'd count the pieces of firewood that were sticking out of the stack
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more than an inch and I would get a speak this age, probably starting
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at five or six and moving all the way up into teenage years. So,
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you know, but I never ever out the firewood stack right. You
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know, it was never perfect. And all the other chores that I had,
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there's always shortcomings, right. So so the lessons I learned from my
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dad were that I am never gonna get the pat on the back that I
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did a good job. I will always be punished no matter how hard I
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work, and I'm going to come up short. And my mom was not
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a disciplinarian at all. She was very emotionally fragile, I think, but
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she turned to extreme religiosity trying to find her in ranters. So she thought
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that you know, if she found the right way to get God's attention that
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he would solve all of her problems. But that never happened, obviously.
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But she was not a disciplinarian either, and so when I would act up
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or be too loud or you know, run my mouth things that kids do,
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she would have me pull the big trash dumpster in from the curb and
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I would sit inside that and wait for my dad to come home to give
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me a spanking for whatever I'd done. So I could, you know,
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think about what I did. And so, you know, my mom basically
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threw me away, rejected me. So I learned that all the things that
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I I knew about myself to be true for my parents, which was that
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I'm never going to be good enough, I don't have any value. I
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can be discarded easily, nobody cares about me. And I carried that stuff
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all the way into adulthood without ever questioning it. You know, I formed
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those beliefs about myself when I was too young to understand the big picture of
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what was going on. I just had the information that I had. I
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was a smart kid. I thought I was drawing the right conclusions, and
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I never doubted that. But I also couldn't question my parents and what they
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were telling me, because to question my parents was to question God and that
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is never Acceptablehen I would go to hell. You know. That was all
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impressed on a very young that the parents are always right, no matter what,
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and you cannot question that. And so my parents rejected me. I
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rejected myself. Did you have siblings. Yes, I have a sister that's
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six years younger than me and a brother that's eleven years younger. So man,
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okay, I'm appreciate sharing that. And it's nothing short of Jesus heavy
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duty. So you live through this, this is your reality. How are
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you coping? How is this? How is this manifesting in your life?
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This abuse, which is what it was. Yeah, it started out the
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first tool that I had available to me was books, reading books. You
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know, we didn't have a television in my house, but I was encouraged
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to read. And I found reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and The
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Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift Junior. That stuff helped me escape my reality.
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If I was in the book, I wasn't in the real world. And
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I think I started reading at four or five, and I spent every available
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opportunity reading to be out of my life, and that got me in a
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lot of trouble too, because I would shirk chores and I would be reading
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in class at school because where I wanted to be was anywhere but here.
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Because what it was in that book, I felt okay about myself. I
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could be part of the of what was going on, and I was okay.
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And when I got into high school, I discovered alcohol. Alcohol solved
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all my problems. Alcohol made me feel good about who I was and where
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I was and what I was doing. It gave me the courage to be
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belligerent to my dad. It made me feel like I was a whole person,
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and I clung to that with both hands. I drank as much as
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I could, as often as possible, starting at about fifteen, sixteen years
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old, and at that time I was able to buy alcohol from the liquor
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stores in town, and so I didn't I mean, every weekend I was
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drinking. And by the time I ran away from home as right out of
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high school to join the army and get away from home, I was drinking
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daily. And you know, the laws of diminishing return certainly applyed to that.
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Like it worked great in the beginning, but then it worked less and
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less and less because inside I still hated who I was. I still hated
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myself. I was building a shame and I had all those insecurities that I
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formed from those negative self beliefs. So alcohol couldn't solve that stuff long term.
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It just hit it for a while. But for a little bit,
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I really felt like everything was okay. That was my big coping coping tools
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reading, then alcohol and cigarettes, anything that I could do to either make
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me feel like I was somewhere else or to change the way that I feel
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right now. So at what point did you begin to look at yourself and
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look at what was going on and decide things needed to change. It was
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so gradual that I don't think there was ever a rock bottom moment where I
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was like, oh my god, you know this is this is not okay
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anymore. You know. My self loathing grew and grew and grew, where
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I was just miserable all the time. Even when I was drinking, I
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was miserable. I hated myself. I would I needed attention and approval from
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other people, and when I was drinking, I would seek that through sexual
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attention from other people. In my friend group, and even though I was
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in a long term relationship, I didn't that approval didn't work for me anymore.
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I needed it from someone else, And it was all unconscious. I
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just knew that when I was in pursuit of somebody else, I felt good,
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especially if I could get some of that attention, But then the next
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day I would be so filled with shame for what I did last night that
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the morning shame became a part of a huge part of my life, whether
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I'd done anything to actually deserve that or not. And I just got to
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the point where I could not imagine living my life like this for the next
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thirty or forty years. I just it just didn't I didn't have any desire
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to live anymore. And I worked with a guy who drank like I drank,
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and we commiserated a lot in the morning, sweating out our hangovers.
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And one day I repeated the line that I heard a stand up comedian say
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some one time. It says, you know, I've I have a drinking
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problem. You know, not not bad enough to go to a meeting,
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but you know, I probably ought to do something about this, And I
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thought that was funny, and I had no idea what it meant, but
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I used that line with my friend. It's just kind of a joke in
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that, you know, I really feel bad about myself right now, and
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so I said that, I said, you know, not bad enough to
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go to a meeting, but you know, I got to slow down with
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this stuff. And he said, you know, I've been thinking about going
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to a meeting, And at that moment, that gave me permission to like.
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I liked that guy and I respected him, and he accepted me,
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and so if if it was okay for him to consider going to a meeting,
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it was okay for me. That gave me permission. And that was
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a Monday, February eighteenth of two thousand and eight, and I went home
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from work that day and did some homework on the internet and drank my last
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three beers while I found Alcoholics Anonymous and determined that there was a meeting two
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blocks from my house at the church right down at the end of the street,
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but it wasn't until a Thursday, and so I decided to sweat it
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out and not not drink until I went to that meeting to see if there
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was something there that could help me get this thing under control. How old
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were you at this point? I was thirty two. There's two. Wow.
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So at any time up to this point justin were had you looked back
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on your life or were you looking back on your life thinking that what I
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went through in my childhood was the cause of this in a sense? No,
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yeah, I had no self awareness at all. I look back at
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it now. I look at it like I was a pinball and life was
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just filled with flippers that knocked me around all over the place. But I
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had I had no control over my direction and no sense of where I had
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been and why, like a zero self awareness. That was one of the
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things that I have a lot of problems with the twelve step programs, But
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one of the things that they did was begin the foundation work of helping me
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develop some self awareness and learn how to look within and figure out the why
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behind the what I'm doing. And I met my mentor there. I was
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about two two and a half years sober when I met him, and he
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was an old gay, one eyed apache Vietnam veteran yoga instructor, just like
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this scary guy with long hair, and just like he was old and jadar,
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but he had zen like he just oozed and radiated zen, and I
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was like, that's the guy I need to go hang out with. And
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he took me through a workbook called A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps by
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Patrick Carnes, and that is when my self awareness really got fast tracked.
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Like I dove in deep on that and learn how to really take apart all
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the pieces and figure out who I am. And I was appalled at how
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many layers of mask and facade that I had stacked on top of, stacked
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on top of, stacked on top of for I could get down to the
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core of who I am, because I had buried myself so deep trying to
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be what I thought other people wanted me to be so that they would accept
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me, and just adding pieces on top of that. Like it was,
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it took me a long time to really get down to who I am,
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what I like to do, what I believe in, Like I had to
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reject a whole lot of stuff that I'd been presenting to the world as this
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is who Justin Long is. And it took me several years to get through
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that process. But I think that was what I needed to get me ready
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to get into therapy. So that when I found a trauma therapist, I
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could hit the ground running and really make the deep changes that I needed to
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make. You know, you sound as though. I mean, you're obviously
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someone who's done a lot of self reflection and cultivate a lot of self awareness,
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and it's inspiring to talk to you because of what you've been through.
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I can't image, you know, I'm not familiar with that workbook, but
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it sounds pretty amazing. Can you just pull out one or two things there
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that helped you to begin to develop this type of self awareness? Oh,
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there was so much. One of the things was the Trauma and Abuse Family
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Tree. I think that's what it was. Child I may had that title
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droung but basically it was my family tree of here's my mom and here was
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her challenges, here's my dad. There was this challenges the grandparents and aunts
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and uncles. And when I started putting all of those pieces together just from
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what information I had, I was like, oh my god, like this
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goes as far back as I know about in so many different ways. I
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knew that my mom had a very challenging childhood and her mom rejected her because
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she wasn't the pretty young girl that she could take the sewing circle and he's
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still off to her friends. You know. Her little sister was that person.
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So my mom got rejected by her mom and my dad. I was
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never able to get that pat on the back from his dad, and his
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dad was a workaholic who never got the pat on the back from his dad.
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And so I knew some of those things, and I could start realizing,
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you know, filling in the gaps as I learned more about psychology and
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what makes us sick and adverse childhood traumas and all of these things that help
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us, you know, go down a dark road. And the more I
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learned about that, the more I realized just how I was never going to
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avoid any of this stuff. This was a path that the only thing that's
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unusual about is the fact that I managed to get off of it. I
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was always going to be an alcoholic or a drug addict, or you know,
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a compulsive gambler or one of whatever those things are that make me try
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to be okay with myself for a day, Like I was never going to
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be able to avoid that, based on all of the landmarks that I hit
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on my way to adulthood. So when when you first started seeing a therapist
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and you said trauma therapist. Was that? Was that a conscious decision?
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I need to see a trauma therapist. No, my first therapist. I've
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had two. I had one at Georgia when I lived up there, and
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I was still scared the death of the idea of therapy because I still clung
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to all of these ideas of masculinity and that men don't do that kind of
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stuff, right. I had a head full of that. Even though I
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was developing willingness. It took me a while to come around to the point
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of asking for straight up mental health help. So I went to a therapist
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under the guise of needing anger management because I have a temper and I felt
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like that was a way for me to get in the door that I could
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find acceptable within myself right. And I found a wonderful woman in Midway,
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Georgia who really took me on the therapy train of just getting comfortable with the
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idea of talking to a stranger about the things that hurt me inside right.
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And I worked with her for about a year before I met my wife,
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who lived down here in Florida. And so when I moved to Florida.
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At that point, I knew that I needed to deal with my childhood traumas
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I hadn't had time to get into all that was my previous therapists. So
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but I found a trauma therapist who does EMDR and that was that was what
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I felt like everything in my life had been building me towards that was my
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big moment. Wow. So what was it like when you began to think
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about your childhood as traumatic? It was difficult, you know. I had
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I think months of therapy with my second therapist, with my trauma therapist,
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and before she really pinned me down and made me admit that my parents abused
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me. Like I could not say those words out loud, like I just
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I would just I would say, you know, there were lots of people
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that had it worse than me, Like I had rough stuff, but there
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were a lot, you know, It's not like my dad was putting cigars
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out on my forehead or something like that, you know. And uh,
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and it was painful. But once I finally just acknowledged, yes, my
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parents abused me, they were wrong, uh that it was like I broke
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through into a new space where I could just like that's the reality, we're
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not. We're not hiding stuff anymore. We're acknowledging truth. And uh,
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and if it's against my parents, and that's okay. You know, they
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it's not that they were bad people, but they did lots of bad things,
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and it's okay for me to acknowledge that. And I think once that
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happened, that that allowed me to just like move without without any constraints in
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that space anymore. So that, uh, what was it an unwillingness to
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admit your parents had abused you? Was was it that you didn't want to
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acknowledge that your parents had abused you? And or was it that you didn't
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want to then be a victim? We're both. I think it was that
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I didn't want to speak ill of my parents. Like my dad was already
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dead at that point, and you know, I had a ton of unresolved
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stuff with him. But I really I felt guilty about saying something negative about
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my dad because he's dead, And I felt guilty about saying something negative about
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my mom because she's not dead. Like it was, it was a ridiculous
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notion that I had, but I felt like I had to protect their reputation
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or something like that. So you start working with this therapist, mdr comes
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into play. What happens. I had such a profound experience. We started
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off just I mean, we hit the ground running on this stuff. I
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made my list of traumas to work through, and we hit those once a
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week. And I realized, probably by my third or fourth session, that
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I was realizing so much stuff about myself that I need to write this down.
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So I started journaling. I would go home and try to write down
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everything that happened in the session, just so I wouldn't lose it. Because
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what I found was that, you know, when we would go back and
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revisit some of these memories, like the woodstack, when I would go back
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and stand beside six year old Justin and my dad and looking at that pile
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of wood, you know, I could see that with my adult perspective and
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what I understand today, and I could see what was going on and realized
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that, you know, six year old Justin did a great job, Like
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he stacked that wood all the way to the top and filled the wood box
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inside every day and the house was always warm because he did all the things
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that he needed to do in that moment, and it didn't matter if it
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was stacked straight or not, that it wasn't about him at all. That
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was about my dad. And you know, and once I had three or
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four of those realizations in different situations, I was like, oh my god,
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you know, like eight year old Justin sitting in the trash can had
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nothing to do with eight year old Justin's inability to be quiet when mom was
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on the phone. That was about mom not having any idea how to be
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a good mother, right, And that that really, like profoundly changed my
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understanding of who I always was, and that I was always good enough,
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and I persevered and I did all the things that I was supposed to do,
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and I went above and beyond and a lot. I never gave up,
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like I did all the things. And that's amazing. That's not someone
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to be ashamed of. That's someone to be proud of. And like that
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just alters everything that I know about myself to be true. Right, And
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over the course of a year of that, every week, over and over
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and over, examining this stuff, talking it out, I'm in the flashlight
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on all the dark spots. I realized that you know, even twenty five
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year old Justin, who I really had a hard time finding compassion for because
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twenty five year old Justin was a raging, alcoholic and wildly inappropriate in almost
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every situation he was in. I understand why he was that way and how
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he got there, and of course he was acting not like that. He
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was a wounded bird and he needed love and he couldn't find it anywhere.
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Like I have compassion and love for twenty five year old Justin. Now,
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that was a hard place for me to get to. But when I got
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to that point was that was when everything about me was fundamentally different. And
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that positive self image and confidence that comes along with that, Like, I've
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never experienced that in my life, and I've felt this way about myself for
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five years now, and I hope it never ever goes away. I hope
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the novelty doesn't wear off because I love this. It's so different. So
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you mentioned that you started journaling. Let's talk about the book. It's this
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rage of a ten year old boy. How did that come about? When
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did that come about? That started out as the journal and I got I
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don't know, probably ten thousand words written down on this thing. And I've
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written several other books, so I understand how the structure of a book and
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putting it all together, and I realized at that point, I was like,
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I have an insight here that has changed everything about my life. And
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while my experiences were my experiences, the insecurities that I formed as a result
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of those things are the same as everybody else has. And the way the
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behaviors that I have as an adult, like my inability to accept criticism from
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anybody, especially a supervisor or somebody that has power and control over me,
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Like all of those behaviors that I had as an adult are results of those
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insecurities and the same thing that everybody else has, and the fact that I
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was able to overcome those insecurities and change the way that I feel about myself,
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Like that's something that the world needs to know. Like that that's the
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magic sauce. That's the magic pill that everybody wants. Right, it exists.
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You just got to be able to do some work. And and so
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I decided that that journal and that has to become a book, and I
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need to I need to share this with other people because like, if I
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can do this, if I can change the way that I feel about me,
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if I can go from a suicidal, self loathing, just feel like
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I'm a piece of crap and hate my life. Guy to I love who
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I am. I love my life. I have a wonderful wife who thinks
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that I'm a great guy. You know. That's like I can't put words
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on that, and that's something that I want to be able to share with
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as many people as possible. So that's that's how the book came to be.
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That's amazing. I mean, you're you're still friakin inspiring Jesus. So
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the the work you did on yourself, I mean, it's it just sounds
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so uh intense. I mean, you just and it sounds like you just
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scored yourself into this was was it? Was it a conscious decision to like
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get better? Like was it were you asking yourself, what the hell is
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going on in my life? I need to move through this? What was
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going on consciously for you during this time? Consciously way back? And I
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would say, and and probably before I even started therapy, back when I
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was doing that gentle path through the twelve Steps, Like the progress that I
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made and the and the improvements that I experienced in my life as a result
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of those efforts really got me committed to a path of just continuous self improvement.
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And the more I have worked on that, especially once I got into
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therapy and started doing this stuff, the more effort I put in, the
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more results I get back from that, And it just confirms the continuous self
25:53
improvement is is a lifestyle that that I can embrace. That's that's something I
25:57
want to lean into. So and I'm still on that. You know.
26:02
I'm working on internal family systems right now and learning all the different parts in
26:04
my head and the roles that all of my defenders play and all this stuff,
26:08
and it's fascinating stuff. But the more I understand me, the better
26:15
I can understand other people. You know, my wife and I own a
26:18
business. We've got a staff of twelve. And my ability to understand myself
26:23
makes me a better leader, I think, because I can understand what's going
26:27
on with other people when they're experiencing challenges. And we all experience challenges,
26:32
you know, it's not it's not people that have suffered major traumas in their
26:36
life. Everybody has challenges. But before I had any self awareness, I
26:40
had no ability to deal with people like that and no patience, had no
26:42
understanding that I would take everything personal. If somebody snaps out, I would
26:47
assume that it was about me, But now I know it's never about me,
26:51
you know. And that lifestyle, I think, I don't know if
26:53
there's an end to that where you know, I've I've covered all the bases,
26:57
but I feel like I've still got a long ways to go on and
27:00
I have no intention of slowing down. Who's the book for? The book
27:06
is for a couple of people. I think one is for people, probably
27:12
more men, just because of the way our culture kind of frames this.
27:18
But I think for people who are curious about therapy and what I would say,
27:23
curious and scared, because we're all scared of the unknown, right,
27:26
But people who don't understand exactly what happens in the therapy session, and because
27:30
of that, will never ever voluntarily walk into one. This is a fly
27:36
on the wall experience for you to walk through a year of trauma therapy with
27:40
me and see exactly what it's like, And I think that that makes it
27:44
a lot safer for people to maybe then go try it themselves. They understand
27:47
what the process is, they understand what the potential results can be, and
27:52
that it's you know, a known quantity. We know what we're walking into.
27:56
But the other target audience, I think for the for this is a
28:00
therapists. It's been read by a number of them and they all found it
28:06
to be useful tools to refer to their clients who are are willing to engage
28:11
in talk therapy but are nervous about going into some deeper stuff like AMDR.
28:15
And for that, I think it's a great proof of concept. That and
28:19
again to shine the light on exactly what it is without having to walk through
28:22
it yourself first, just to take the mysterious, you know, haze of
28:30
the unknown away and let people see what it is and that it's a definite
28:33
worthwhile use of their time and their money. The book again is called The
28:38
Righteous Rage of a Ten year Old Boy. We'll have that linked up here
28:42
at the show notes page at the traumadarispodcast dot com. So just in your
28:47
website is J J. How do you want to pronounce that? Well,
28:53
Boyd is my middle name boid, So like you say J Boyd, long
28:57
J Boyd along. We'll have that linked up here also. So people will
29:04
go to your website and what can they learn about you? What do you
29:07
have there. Uh, there's a linkstone awful lot of podcasts that I've been
29:11
on all of my books. I've written eight books so far. Wow.
29:15
My most popular series is the Adventures of the Horse Doctors Husband series, which
29:21
I just put out book three on that one. And you know that that
29:23
one's fun stuff about crazy horse emergencies and stuff that I get to see in
29:27
my life. Uh that just most people don't ever have any exposure to that,
29:33
right, So so that's fun stuff. I've also got a sci fi
29:36
series on there that that's my my true passion. And but I've got a
29:40
blog that's got a lot of self help and you know, personal growth stuff
29:45
in there. And uh, and then just random, random fun stuff that
29:48
I think people might get a kick out of. Awesome, Awesome, we'll
29:52
have that linked up again here. Uh, justin love to have you back
29:57
whatever you want, man, Just you know it's it's I mean, what
30:03
you've gone through is crazy, there's no denying it. But you are such
30:07
you just emanate this. Uh what compassion, this self awareness? This I
30:17
don't want to acceptance. You know you you I'm talking to you, and
30:22
I can feel that you acknowledge what you've gone through. And you've moved through
30:29
it. It's not like you've denied it. You've moved through it and you've
30:32
come out. Not to say that it's over, but you're you've certainly grown
30:37
into this amazing person. I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate you
30:42
saying that very much. That's uh, it's funny that I've finally to the
30:45
point where I don't seek external validation anymore, but it sure feels good when
30:49
I get it. Yeah. Well, it's it's who you are man.
30:53
Again. Appreciate you being here and look forward to having you back. Thanks
30:57
so much. Thank you, alright, take care listen